


Pedestal

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [120]
Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Family, Gen, Misuse of Comms, POV Outsider, Sass, Sass and feels, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:41:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26613151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: For a Tumblr prompt: CT's don't interact much with Alphas.  They don't quite know what to make of one that did.
Series: Soft Wars [120]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 25
Kudos: 382





	Pedestal

**Author's Note:**

> Full ask (thanks anon!)
> 
> "Okay, I don’t know a lot about alphas, but the image my brain conjured up felt too funny not to share. So in the GAR alphas are kinda living legends that aren’t tied to a unit but go where they’re needed (maybe?idk where I got it from but I’m rolling w it) but it’s also common knowledge that alphas trained CCs. So maybe some casual sass from a CC while maybe not expected by onlookers, can be reasoned due to history. But imagen how Rex sassing 17 would look to people who don’t know his upbringing"

They don’t know what finally drops the jammer.

Fixer and Deadeye’ve been busy shorting every fusebox that’ll spark and packing flammables into anything that won’t on it’s own. If it won’t burn it will; if it’s grounded, it’s not; if it’s steady, it’s coming down faster than a tinny can holler ‘keep em away from the load bearers’. They’re just good like that.

Hell, Sharp’d be willing to bet rations against how long it’s been since those tremors under his boots were last natural. Damn the Seps for building down. Yeah, the Devil Dogs will run ‘em to ground anyway, but it’s always so much more _work_ when you gotta dig them up out of their anthills first.

“If it was going to be easy,” the Alpha drawls and every Dog in range snaps attention their way. “They’d send nat-borns to do it.”

“Oya!” cheers Jark from nigh on the legend’s instep. Sharp thanks all the little gods the Alpha isn’t annoyed by him, given the givens and his tendency to hover. Likes him, even, maybe. Likes them all, maybe, and it’s not any surprise that the Dogs ran a little hotter, a little _harder_ this op.

The Dogs are only perched up in this hidey because Alpha found it. On the map database in an SBD’s processor core.

That he ripped off the clanker-in-chief bare handed. Thing’s still embedded in the head chassis and Alpha feels no nevermind having the thing tucked under one arm while he navigates.

Damn legends, Alphas.

Ground rumbles under their boots and if it’s a quake or an overload, none of them can tell. They lost track of the cascading, sympathetic detonations ten kliks ago. The Dogs might have really gotten a bit out of glove this go-round, truth told.

The Alpha smirks Sharp’s way and he can’t find it in his heart to berate em. Let em play a bit, he thinks. Under Ozzie _ Or’dinii _1 they never get to have fun except where they can sneak it. It’s good, to run with brass that can run with the Dogs. It’s better, when they run with brass that says ‘bring it down, gents’ and means mantle to mesosphere and everything in between.

It’s amazing to run with brass that can outrun em, that’ll rout an approaching line like they’re the last chore between him and chow while waiting for them to catch up.

However the Kaminiise brewed those Alphas, Sharp thinks, they had that recipe on lock.

There’s a grumble in the distance, up past the ridge to their rear that Sharp feels in his synth tooth. “Load up, move out,” the Alpha orders fractions of seconds before Sharp’s wrestled the words, because yeah, this hidey might not be a good idea much longer.

It’s amazing, the little ways you notice that even an Alpha’s brain clocks faster than baseline’s.

Devil Dogs are up and moving with only minimal mockery and nearly no scuffle. Not quite as rough as they would be if they were running alone, but not near as clacked in as when Ozzie’s possibly in the same system. The Alpha doesn’t care if the boys are boys as long as they do their jobs, but every last one of em are still bent on making the best impression.

Maybe if they’re real damn good, Alpha-17 will want to run with them again. If they’re real damn lucky, he’s looking for a squad. Not a man of em would choose to stay where they are, after all. First call, and it’s 'no sir we don't have a commander. Major Ozzel who?'

They’re up and moving, and some time between the shakes they start to feel and the squad breaking the dust barrier at the lip of the canyon, the jammers go down.

“ _Do you want to go back and try that again_?”

Jammer goes down, comms come up and when they breach the lip their pickup is twirling neatly through the mine cloud overhead.

“Strike Team to Runner, can you repeat.”

There’s something a little off about the Alpha’s perfectly professional tone, something a little menacing about his perfectly pleasant face. The Dogs shuffle, at odds. The vod on comms radios back.

“ _I said ‘do you want to go back and try that again’_ ,” he repeats. “ _In case you thought you_ _didn’t look_ _impressive enough._ ”

Sharp knows that face the Alpha’s making now: that’s annoyance. Who the hell does the pilot think he is?

“ _The slow walk through the_ _dust was a good start,_ ” the idiot continues blithely.

‘ _Squad roster_ _top secret’_ Blunt signs madly and kark it all to Kamino. The damn pilot doesn’t know there’s an Alpha down here, does he? Probably doesn’t even know Sharp ran this one, might think he’s on the air with one of the Cpls.

Kark it all, usually Sharp only has to run interference for his _own_ squad suffering Boot-Swallow Sickness.

“ _But if all the holos are right then one of you should have dramatically shouldered a cannon. Maybe lit up a deathstick and flicked the match away. There definitely needed to be a good orangey background flare right as you came up._ ”

Sharp hopes that brat has command as tolerant as Sharp is. The Alpha’s a pragmatic type; he’ll have the pilot slip them back through the mine line _first_ before ripping him a secondary fifth point of contact. Sharp hopes wherever they land, the pilot’s got command that’ll at least try to step in between.

“ _And strategically ripped uppers_ ,” the dead vod chatters. “ _Eye-candy, to raise the ratings_.”

Because it sure as kriff ain’t gonna be Sharp.

“You’re opinion has been noted, CT,” the Alpha intones, deadpan dangerous. _ Kot _2 to the chirpy little bastard, he sounds like he would have been a riot.

“ _Let me know if you want me to actually land and follow protocol, or if I should roll in slow with the sides down so you can leap heroically aboard_.”

The sad truth if it is that there’s more than one of the Dogs seriously contemplating whether they could pull that off. The Element Of Awesome, or some idiocy. Sharp stares down the likely candidates until they subside. If only he could do that over comm.

The LAAT/i lands and okay yeah, Sharp is a _little_ impressed that the pilot angled it to kick the dust plume back away from them. That takes some skill. The Alpha huffs and it sounds like he sees the same, so maybe the pilot will survive this.

“ _Hi I’m with the GAR, here to pick up some relics that require special handling._ ”

If he would just _shut up_ , maybe Sharp could rip him one that’d leave him a little battered but at least not bleeding.

Sharp tries. Little gods know, Sharp _did_ try. He’d nudged Deadeye up towards the gunner seat, conveniently blocking that route to cockpit. Had Sten start taking a look at whatever the kriff Jark karked up on his arm conveniently in front of the door release. He was out the second they touched down aboard, steps firm but quick forwards. He'd get there first, deal the kid his licks and won't be a reason to bother the Alpha with this.

Alpha 17 sails past, effortless like Sharp isn’t near on to a run. Kark, he tried.

Alpha catches the idiot by the ear the second he’s boots down, hauls his empty blond head upright.

Kid doesn’t even flinch. For kark’s sake, he _has_ to know ARC markings and yet there’s no repentance in his eyes. There’s defiance.

Hells, if Alpha leaves anything of him after, Sharp might smack him one. Alpha’s are the _best_ of them, the least they deserve is a little damn respect. Where does this brat dismount?

“Four months, 17,” the kid growls and like a sudden clang of a bell, all his chipper rings hollow in Sharp’s memory. “You made Ponds cry.”

Oh.

“The boys can catch him later,” Deadeye’s saying as Sharp walks back, Dogs fanned around him. They’re in GAR territory, they don’t _need_ to stand guard, injured in center. But men might die, habits don’t. “Give him a talking to before he steps in it with someone less tolerant.”

“Stand down,” Sharp orders. He pushes center, checks Jark’s arm for something to do, not that Sten would’ve kriffed it up. “It’s a domestic.”

Understanding shudders through and the Devil Dogs retreat. This isn’t their fight, not their sphere. Not their circus, not their monkeylizards. They might not know the details, but between a domestic and a droideka only one is solved quick and easy with mag-pulse. They don’t push themselves in on the other.

When Sharp glances back, one last look at the two before they Dogs break for downtime, everything about their body language screams familiar. Comfortable. The Alpha tugs just a touch on the pilot and there’s a moment of resistance before he presses into the Alpha’s chest, rocks him a little on his heels. Whoever that vod is, anyone with eyes can tell he’s Alpha-17’s.

Damn, men like tanks but still human under that. Alphas really are something, aren’t they?

Kark, Sharp hopes Alpha-17’s scouting for a squad. They could use some of all of that, the Devil Dogs. Little gods know they’d run better for it.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Moron, Fool. Back  
> 2\. Strength. If this is your first time dabbling in this little universe of mine, know that this is an in-joke that started [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23407009). Back  
> 


End file.
